Scientists must push to preserve a small part of a large US survey that provides essential information on the ever-changing scientific workforce.
doi: 10.1038/516287a
Pressures in all stages of the news-making process can lead to hype in science reporting.
doi: 10.1038/516287b
Climate negotiations in Lima stumbled on transparency, but there is time to adjust.
doi: 10.1038/516288a
A front-line report from Sierra Leone examines efforts to change hearts and minds in West Africa’s villages.
doi: 10.1038/516295a
Birds get fresh perches in revamped tree of life built by vast collaboration.
doi: 10.1038/516297a
Are geopolitical tensions destroying important links with the West, or can Russian research go it alone?
doi: 10.1038/516298a
Comets, stem cells and cosmic dust are among the year's top stories.
doi: 10.1038/516300a
Eruptions, comets and a see-through mouse all captured the imagination in 2014.
doi: 10.1038/516304a
今年の科学に大きな足跡を残したのは、どんな人たちだろうか。
doi: 10.1038/516311a
さまざまなアルケン化合物同士の反応で結合形成を促進する鉄触媒が開発された。これは、難しい反応経路でしか合成できなかった化合物を合成する簡単な経路への道を開くものだ。
doi: 10.1038/516332a
RNAを使うtoehold switchと呼ばれる翻訳調節装置の開発によって、ほとんどどんなRNAからもタンパク質を産生でき、正確で低コストの診断が可能になる新たな時代への道が開かれるかもしれない。
doi: 10.1038/516333a
アフリカの半砂漠地帯で行われた、マラリアを伝播する蚊の長期的サンプリングによって、形態学的に区別不可能な3種類が、乾季をしのいで生き残るのにそれぞれ異なる戦略を用いていることが明らかになった。
doi: 10.1038/nature14073
新たに行われた解析によって、保全対策には、保護地域の全球的ネットワークの拡大が有効となる可能性が示されたが、これが土地利用の変化や国際的な協力の欠如によってどのように損なわれるのかも明らかになった。
doi: 10.1038/516336a
磁気電気材料ならば、磁気を電場によって制御することができる。こうした材料の1つで、電気分極のスイッチングを実現する間接的経路が見つかり、この制御の実用化が近づいた。
doi: 10.1038/516337a
A型およびB型のインフルエンザウイルスに由来するRNAポリメラーゼの完全な結晶構造が解かれ、RNAポリメラーゼがRNA合成を開始する仕組みについての手掛かりが得られ、抗ウイルス薬設計の際の標的候補も明らかになった。
doi: 10.1038/516338a
本年度に掲載されたNews & Viewsの中から編集部が精選した8編。
doi: 10.1038/516340a
Highly substituted carbon–carbon bonds are constructed using a simple iron catalyst and an inexpensive silane: more than 60 examples of this reaction — in which heteroatom-substituted olefins are reacted with electron-deficient olefins — are presented.
doi: 10.1038/nature14006
Polycomb group proteins are known to maintain gene repression during development; however, when autism susceptibility candidate 2 (AUTS2) associates with some Polycomb group complexes, these complexes have an unexpected gene activation role, offering new insight into the role of AUTS2 in neurological disorders.
doi: 10.1038/nature13921
The crystal structure of the bat-specific influenza A polymerase in complex with the viral RNA promoter is presented, revealing how binding of the 5′ end of the viral RNA is required to activate or enhance the polymerase allosterically.
doi: 10.1038/nature14008
Atomic resolution crystal structures of influenza A and B polymerases are presented; comparison of these structures provides mechanistic insight into influenza polymerase functions, explaining the processes of cap-snatching and cap-dependent priming, which are unique to segmented negative-strand RNA viruses.
doi: 10.1038/nature14009
Hubble Space Telescope observations of the stellar cluster NGC 1651, which is approximately two billion years old, show that the colour–brightness distribution of stars old enough to have left the main sequence can be explained only by a single-age population, despite having a feature usually interpreted to indicate an age spread of more than 300 million years.
doi: 10.1038/nature13969
Multiferroic devices that can switch magnetization with electric field at room temperature are desirable, but in BiFeO3 the required direct 180-degree switch is thermodynamically forbidden; here it is shown that such switching is possible because the kinetics of the switching process favours a two-step sequence of partial switching.
doi: 10.1038/nature14004
The dynamics of two correlated electrons can be reconstructed from the quantum interference of low-lying doubly excited states in helium, as observed in attosecond transient-absorption spectra, and can be controlled by tuning the interaction with a visible laser field of variable intensity.
doi: 10.1038/nature14026
The production of hydrogen gas from the Precambrian continental lithosphere has been underestimated; taking into account hydrogen from serpentinization and radiolysis may double estimates previously based on marine systems alone.
doi: 10.1038/nature14017
Internationally coordinated expansion of the global protected area network to 17% could triple the average protection of species ranges and ecoregions; if projected land-use changes and consequent habitat loss until 2040 occur, currently feasible protection levels will not be achievable, and more than 1,000 threatened species face reductions in the range of over 50%.
doi: 10.1038/nature14032
Malaria-carrying mosquitoes nearly disappear in the dry season, yet they reappear suddenly following the first rains; using surveys of mosquito densities, the authors characterize the population dynamics of the three main vector species and use these to infer persistence by long-distance migration in two species and aestivation in the third.
doi: 10.1038/nature13987
It has been known for some time that limbs share at least some of their molecular patterning mechanism with external genitalia; here, this connection is examined in a variety of species, revealing that once-shared developmental trajectories could help to explain the observed patterning similarities.
doi: 10.1038/nature13819
Cold exposure activates brown adipose tissue (BAT) through the sympathetic nervous system, and previous studies have reported inhibitory effects of the purinergic transmitter adenosine in BAT from hamster or rat; here adenosine/A2A signalling is shown to be involved in sympathetic activation of human and murine brown adipocytes to allow protection of mice from diet-induced obesity.
doi: 10.1038/nature13816
The in vitro generation, from pluripotent stem cells, of three-dimensional human gastric organoids (hGOs) that contain a physiological gastric epithelium comprising both progenitor and differentiated cell types, and have expected functional characteristics is described, as is modelling the pathophysiological response of the human stomach to Helicobacter pylori using these hGOs.
doi: 10.1038/nature13863
An extensive analysis of HERVH (a primate-specific endogenous retrovirus) expression in human pluripotent stem cells is presented, identifying a sub-population of cells within cultured human embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells that has characteristics of naive-state cells — the study provides evidence for a new primate-specific transcriptional circuitry regulating pluripotency.
doi: 10.1038/nature13804
A protein degradation pathway is found at the inner nuclear membrane that is distinct from, but complementary to, endoplasmic-reticulum-associated protein degradation, and which is mediated by the Asi protein complex; a genome-wide library screening of yeast identifies more than 20 substrates of this pathway, which is shown to target mislocalized integral membrane proteins for degradation.
doi: 10.1038/nature14096
A link between an intracellular stress response, bacterial infection and triggering of the innate immune response is shown in Caenorhabditis elegant; exposure to the pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa caused activation of the transcription factor ATFS-1 and innate immunity that is regulated by the mitochondrial unfolded protein response.
doi: 10.1038/nature13818
The main pathway of somatic mutations leading to the generation of high affinity broadly neutralizing antibodies against the influenza haemagglutinin stem is defined.
doi: 10.1038/nature13764
The CRISPR/Cas system has been used to induce the Eml4–Alk chromosomal inversion in mice, a characteristic chromosomal rearrangement seen in human non-small cell lung cancers; the mice developed lung cancer and responded to the ALK inhibitor crizotinib, which is used to treat lung cancer patients with the EML4–ALK rearrangement; this general strategy can be used to engineer other disease-associated chromosomal rearrangements in mice and potentially in other organisms.
doi: 10.1038/nature13902
The CRISPR/Cas system has been used in mice for genome editing to introduce genetic alterations found in human lung tumours, and these genome modifications resulted in mouse lung tumours showing different histopathologies depending on the genes altered; the CRISPR/Cas system offers improved and faster ways to create animal models of human diseases such as cancer.
doi: 10.1038/nature13906
Genome-wide chromatin conformation capture (Hi-C) is used to investigate three-dimensional genome organization in Schizosaccharomyces bombe; small domains of chromatin interact locally on chromosome arms to form globules, which depend on cohesin but not heterochromatin for formation, and heterochromatin at centromeres and telomeres provides crucial structural constraints to shape genome architecture.
doi: 10.1038/nature13833
R-loops, which have been considered to be rare and potentially harmful transcriptional by-products, are now shown to be needed for antisense transcription and to induce repressive chromatin marks that reinforce pausing of transcription and thereby enhance its termination.
doi: 10.1038/nature13787
